As flat as the Carolina coastal region in which it’s set, Dear John features two gorgeous young actors playing denuded characters in search of more narrative garb.

Offers audiences a similar-but-not-the-same mix of effects, existentialism and creepy body horror while forgetting the things like character, humor and tension that made Carpenter's take on the same material so memorable past the initial fearsome fluid flesh sequences.

The Hobbit is just good enough to make you aware of how it could have been much, much better. If you take your kids-while shielding them from various nonhuman bad guys getting decapitated both repeatedly and, worse, bloodlessly-they'll have a good time. Bilbo Baggins' quest for adventure and Warner Bros' quest for cash will take him through three films. But your quest for epic, truly entertaining filmmaking will be more successful if you just stay home.

Perry's latest is crudely assembled and mostly emotionally unengaging.

Tedious and forgettable.

It's true epic filmmaking that's toppled over its tipping point: after the 20th explosion and 64th wall of shattering glass, its enormity undermines its impact.

Fans of the filmmaker should thrill at the prospect of a new project, but the film's lackadaisical pacing and preoccupation with pulling the rug out from under the audience.

The Rite might have been more affecting if the performances gave just a hint that its histrionics were more than just that.

Enter the Void was never going to be another "Avatar." It won't be another "Irreversible" either.

Garbus' over-reliance on interviews that state rather than dramatize Fischer's excellence makes this a portrait that too often seems more overheard than inhabited.

The film's strength isn't its shock tactics - it's the rapid-fire, party montage editing that finds a million natural ways to put mundane actions and moments up against each other for comic effect.

The film, released in both 2D and 3D, delivers lots of freshly minted CGI'd action (eventually) but none of it grabs you. There's just something too synthetic about the whole enterprise - it's fantasy tipped over into fakery.

Redemption could have come if the story had more kick.

The new film could have benefited from even a moment of genuine reflection. Being a mechanic seems like a thinking man's occupation. The Mechanic, though, barely has a thought in its head.

The Words is a movie for people who buy their novels at Starbucks, made by people who write their novels at Starbucks.

The second half, though, simply descends into chaotic banality as the sisters await their fate.

If so inclined for a breezy, violent time-waster audiences could do worse. Travolta sadly can do so much better.

This Arthur feels flat and lifeless, especially when compared to its highly successful predecessor.

Further exploration of this psychological question might have made for a more substantial, less enervating artfilm. One less liable to be experienced as an approximation of cinematic waterboarding.

This foreign view of the subject is anthropologically useful, however the film's photo animation technique transforms family photos (used extensively to fill in historical plot holes) into something that resembles zombie-resurrection.

Killer Joe isn't as outlandish in premise as it is in execution, which is saying something.

A chick flick for do-gooders, The Help suffers from a malady common to the discrimination drama: its treatment of inequality is more condescending than the prejudice it aims to remedy.

A movie whose confusing narrative and at times intriguing parts are at war with each other, and never quite gel.

The profundity to tedium ratio is around 1 to 3. Not bad for a micro-release slated to screen seven times in a museum (NY's Rubin Museum of Art) but it's a film more interesting in theory than reality.

Shows remarkable access to military materials and personnel but, as a film, is unremarkable every other way.

It seems impossible that a sequel to a movie as ridiculous as "Piranha 3D" could disappoint but Piranha 3DD stops at mediocre before arriving at gloriously bad.

One of Hot Tub Time Machine’s only genuinely nifty moves is getting John Cusack, Dobler himself, to topline the film.

A superficially provocative movie that tries way too hard to be memorable. Horror aficionados will be tantalized before walking away unsatisfied.